Greek Actress Sang In Destroyer

Manawatu Times, Volume 66, Issue 115, 16 May 1941, Page 5

Greek Actress Sang In Destroyer

LONDON. Torpedoed in the Atlantic, adrift for eleven hours iu a lifeboat, then picked up by a destroyer, Aladame Katina Paxinou, Greece’s leading tragedienne, is still determined to go to the United States. Aladame Paxinou w T as going to America to play for the British Hellenes War Fund under the patronage of the Duchess of Kent when the ship was hit by three torpedoes. “We left the convoy,’’ she said, “and the captain tried to get back to port. For thirteen hours we went full speed ahead; then suddenly the ship started sinking. “We all got away in the life-boats—-there were only three other passengers, my sister, and English girl, and ail American actor. Then a destroyer picked us up. The Singing Gunner “We were three days in the ship because it had work to do. We three women Would go on deck and watch all the wonderful things they did. “There was one ,gunner, he loves to sing, and asked me to accompany him. “Wo would all start a sing-song, an enemy aeroplane would be sighted, the gunner would disappear and then come .back to his singing. “I have never been so happy in my life. I saw, 100, what the British Navy is really like. It can never be beaten. “ I am a coward, but those men made me feel brave. I would rather be torpedoed again than be in a London ‘blitz.’ ”